Dorothy Jurney: Interview #2

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[Begin Tape 1, Side A]

Kasper: Now it's Bert Benedict that we want to remember? Ruth Sarles' husband was Bert Benedict? Okay?

Jurney: That's right. And Ruth edited the findings of each one of the IWY committees. I had been instructed by Jill Ruckelshaus in the beginning to write a report that would be the kind of thing that the Wall Street Journal had startedóusing personal incidents to introduce a subject. You may not be that familiar with the Wall Street Journal, but it set a pattern across the country and many newspapers are doing it nowóit becomes a little too much.

Kasper: I was curious about that. In other words, the kind of thing I've noticed in the newspaper where they'll say, "Henrietta Jones and her daughter were stranded on the subway platform one night at 5:45 a.m." And that's the first paragraph, and then they go into the story which isóthere are subway problems. Is that the kind of thing you're talking about?

Jurney: Yes. Yes. That is the kind of thing.

Kasper: Oh, I've often wondered where that came from.

Jurney: And the Journal started it and I thought it was a pretty good technique. And I was delighted when I was instructed to do the final report of the National Commission on International Women's Year that way, but I want to get into that later because in the end it did not meet with everybody's approval. The black man that I interviewed, the celebrityó

Kasper: Yes. Nat King Cole? [Laughter.]

Jurney: Yes. The other thing is that I remembered, and I didn't have a chance to look in my files, but I think I've sent it to the University of Missouri Library. When I was working in Michigan City, I produced for several years educational programs for the women of Michigan Cityóthe newspaper didóbut I was the one that instigated this. I'd forgotten all about it, but I came across a little program a month or two ago, and that's why I think I probably shipped it off. But I wish I had it. I think it was both a morning and an afternoon session held in a church hall, which was on our main street, in an Episcopal church which had a nice auditorium. And the paper paid the expense of the hall, which undoubtedly was very minor, and then we had some speakers. And darned if I know what the subjects were. I wish I could see that program again.

Kasper: How often were these held, these women's programs?

Jurney: Oh, I would say, annually, for probably three years. And we just promoted it in the paper. We wrote stories about it.

Kasper: Vivian Castleberry did something similarly in Dallas.

Jurney: Did she?

Kasper: And she said that she called them homemaker panels and she began them in the summer because she said Dallas was so deadly in the summer and there was no news that she was desperate for news. And she felt that if she got women together who could talk about themselves and their community and their lives and families and work and so forth and so on, that she would generate news. And she generated a lot more than news, but she certainly generated news in the beginning as well.

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programs that were more interesting knowing that the newspaper therefore would cover it.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: And it was kind of that you both were servedóthe newspaper was served and the clubs were served because they had more interesting programs and then you had more interesting material to report on.

Jurney: Marie didn't speak about these club conferences that we had?

Kasper: I don't believe she actually mentioned the conferences. I think she mentioned some sort of contest. There were some contests and she talked about silver bowls being awarded.

Jurney: I don't think that's while I was at the Herald. It could have followed. But she was there when we started those club conferences. And instead of calling the clubs up, we were more likely to have done this at this annual conference.

Kasper: I remember her saying, as I said, that the paper was instrumental in moving the clubs along to have more and more interesting programs.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: Because of the business of wanting to do more than just putting notices inó

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: But to really having reportersóbut you had to have something that was interesting for reporters to report on.

Jurney: Yeah. That's right.

Kasper: Which would, in turn, stimulate the clubs.

Jurney: It worked out very well.

Kasper: She did talk about that. I don't remember her talking about the programs in particular, but she may have, in a slightly different context. But you made it clear that it was, in fact, a program that was set up hand-in-hand between the paper and the club officers.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: Were these held more often than on an annual basis?

Jurney: No. It was on an annual basis because you had a president and a club secretary or publicity chairman, they called them. I never liked that title because I didn't regard it as publicity, I regarded it as newsónews chairman. They served for a year so we would meet early onóeither the end of August or early September as the club program was getting underway.

Kasper: I think that's what she was referring to, to be honest with you. And there was something about some silver bowls being awarded to the club that had done the most civic activities that year.

Jurney: I'm sure Marie created that, probably along with the help of the promotion department at the Herald, and this followed my tenure there.

Kasper: Yeah. Let me ask you a slightly convoluted question and I'll do a little talking for a change. Yesterday we stopped at the point where you had told a story when Cle Althouse asked you what your ambitions were and you replied, "To do your best everyday." And you didn't know at the time that you were being interviewed to be a city editor and that as a result of your answer you were turned down because it was stated that you were not ambitious enough.

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Kasper: And those were circumstances not of your creationó

Jurney: No.

Kasper: óbut rather of the culture or the society in which you lived.

Jurney: Absolutely.

Kasper: And you were, let's put it very bluntly, a victim of those circumstances.

Jurney: You express it beautifully. While in 1930, when I was graduating from Northwestern and my friends were career-minded, there was that impetus that we should all be workingówe should be working women and have careers. But nobody ever pointed out, or we were not smart enough to realize, that the horizons were not very high.

Kasper: That's a good point.

Jurney: And I know that I felt very stronglyóI was very disappointed when I found out that the women who were in college around the time of World War II were not career-minded. They were marriage and family and children minded. And that struck me as retrogression for women. And it struck me so forcibly, and I guess I was, in the forties, I was still in Miami, but I seemed to be aware of this more in the fifties, late fifties, when I was in Detroit. Don't ask me why it struck me more forcibly, but anyway that ten-year span in there I would sayó

Kasper: You were very much aware of the shift.

Jurney: Yes. Yeah.

Kasper: In women's approach to managing their lives.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: What hope do you think we haveó

Jurney: Now?

Kasper: óof combining the two?

Jurney: Well it isn't easy.

Kasper: As Freud said, "liebe und arbeit"ólove and work. What are theóare we getting any closer that women may have integrated lives that look more like a whole picture rather than half?

Jurney: Oh, yes. I think women are closer, but it is certainly going to take the help of the young men to make this come about fully. And I think marriages will be much better when men are interested in sharing family life. And I guess many of them are today.

Kasper: Oh, I agree with you. And I don't believe, I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth, I don't believe it can be done without partnerships.

Jurney: That's right.

Kasper: And I don't mean for a moment that it can be done because we need the men to give us the freedom to do it. I mean because the business of work and family needs two peopleówhether its two men or two women or a man and a womanóit needs two to run it.

Jurney: And the men can have fuller lives.

Kasper: Absolutely. Absolutely.

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Jurney: [Laughter.]

Kasper: óthat might have happened had you been male or, as Catherine East said, if you hadn't been born too soon, but it doesn't take a jot away from the importance of what you did do for American journalism.

Jurney: Well, thank you. Thank you. I think that's very nice. Yes, I think maybe I played a role in the transition from society pages to women's pages with significant news. And while nobody's going to remember me for what I did there, I have a great sense ofó what's the word I wantósatisfaction, in thinking that I brought stories to the attention of women somewhat in Miami, but more thoroughly in Detroit. I think Detroit was the high point as far as innovation.

Kasper: Well, I think you will be rememberedó

Jurney: Well, that's nice of you to say.

Kasper: ófor that contribution and in some ways, perhaps it's the silver lining. Had you moved on to sort of the male enterprise of American journalism, perhaps that would have been a missed opportunity.

Jurney: That's true.

Kasper: Perhaps you would not have been able to do what you did for journalism and for American women in transforming the women's pages from society news to substantive news. And I think that that's what we need to remember.

Jurney: The news departments have been for so many years so completely structured. You have to have somebody covering the statehouse and legislation, and police, fire, the courts, etc., etc. By the time you get all of those beats taken care of, you have no staff left to go much in depth into social issues. However, present day newspapers, some of them, are doing a better job of this. I don't see the Washington Post, so I don't know what they're doing. The New York Times has certainly changedóthey have a full page on developments in medicine, a section on science, one on education. They even have several pages now devoted to what's happening in the colleges. I don't know that they have any pages that are devoted just to the family.

Kasper: No, and I wish they did.

Jurney: Yes. Or on what women are doing. I think those are missing. They occasionally get a story on their style pages, but as a matter of fact, I haven't seen anything recently about women there. But over the past two or three years, there were stories about women in business and women who came together to talk about their problems in business and the glass ceiling and that kind of thing. Now those appeared on the style pages, but they were competing with fashions.

Kasper: Well, and a lot of hokey, glitzy, surface stuff.

Jurney: Yeah.

Kasper: I mean, I personally, I rarely read the style section because I always find that if there is an article in there on womenówomen's issuesóthat it's been relegated to the style section and therefore it's not serious news.

Jurney: Right. [Laughter.]

Kasper: Because if it can be in there next to the people news, you know, that Bing Crosby's son wrote a book about how he was not a nice father. Or some cartoon or a movie review, and then something about what Mrs. Bush wore to dinner when somebody came to the White House for some fancy state dinner, I find that the notion that that article has been put in there is because it is not serious. And that offends me as a woman.

Jurney: Right. Yes. You're right.

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Kasper: Well, you said something just a few minutes ago, and I think this is where we move on, because it was, in fact, the next chronologic piece. You said that your tenure at the Detroit Free Press, which was from 1959 to 1972, was the high point of your journalism career. Would you like to talk about that some?

Jurney: Well, I had good top editors. Lee Hills was spending a lot of time in Detroit. I think when I first went there he may have been called the executive editor, but I guess he had a more important title than that because he was still the top editor of the Free Press and the Miami Herald and he divided his time. Derick Daniels came along. Derick was assistant to Lee. I think Derick came in first as a city editor and then became assistant to Lee Hills and Derick was an excellent newspaperman. We had sort of a mother and son relationship, but also a strong professional relationship. Then Al Neuharth was there for a time as assistantó(I wish I could remember what Lee and Al were called, but they were the top editors. And it's got to be something above executive editor.) And Al, since we had had a previous editor-reporter relationship at the Miami Herald, we knew each other well. Also, I guess I should mention the fact, and this had slipped my mind, but probably due to Lee's understanding of what I was doing in the women's sections, I got invited to Knight and then Knight-Ridder executive meetings around the country.

Kasper: That must have been unusual for a woman.

Jurney: I think it was. And it was certainly illuminating for me and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Kasper: In what way were they illuminating, those meetings?

Jurney: Well, I learned how the Charlotte Observer and the Miami Herald and the Detroit Free Press, Chicago Daily News, although the News quickly went out of the pictureóMr. Knight sold itóbut how theseóand then, later on, the Philadelphia Inquirerónewspaper problems were handledóeditorial problems. I don't recall that there was much discussion of circulation problems, but there probably was some discussion. And I remember this particularly in regard to the Charlotte Observer, which Jimmy Knight had bought, and it then later became a part of the Knight-Ridder organization. But I remember one of the editors telling how he had visited small towns in both North and South Carolina because the Observer covered those areas in an outstanding way, but how he had gone about to learn more about the small communities and their interests and how he had passed this on to the circulation department. In fact, they had worked hand-in-glove together on this. So I do know that circulation came into the picture.

Kasper: Now, were you the only woman at these meetings, as you remember?

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: And did Lee Hills make it clear, or did anybody make it clear, why you were invited along? Clearly, there was some expertise as an editor that you had that they wanted to have.

Jurney: I think it was just generally understood.

Kasper: What was generally understood?

Jurney: That I could contribute ideas that the various newspapers could use.

Kasper: In solving some of their editing or other kinds of problems.

Jurney: Yes. Yes. And it was while I was at the Miami Herald that Lee asked me to go, on three different occasions, to the Charlotte Observer after Jimmy Knight had bought it. It wasn't a very good newspaper. In fact, it didn't take me long after my first trip to Charlotte to realize that the composing room was running the editorial department, the news department. Deadlines were set by the composing room. As I recall, I don't think the newsroom of the Charlotte Observer was even dummying inside pages. I think the composing room decided where those stories were going to be. I have confidence that the Observer did indeed dummyóthe editors dummiedóthe front page and the second front. I don't thinkó

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Jurney: I got a divorce in '59 which Frank appealed to the Florida Supreme Court and won.

Kasper: Really. On what basis?

Jurney: Well, the Florida law was not very good for women in divorce cases and incompatibility was not a cause for divorce.

Kasper: Which was the grounds you would have used.

Jurney: Yes, which really was what I usedóI don't remember how the lawyers pursued it, but I think it was clear to the judge who granted me the divorce in the lower court that it was a case of incompatibility.

Kasper: Now why was Frank opposed to the divorce so strongly that he took it to the Florida Supreme Court?

Jurney: Well, I'm sorry you can't ask him that. I don't really know. Some peopleó

Kasper: Is Frank dead?

Jurney: Yes, he is.

Kasper: He died.

Jurney: Some people said it may have been because he was a Catholic. I don't think it was. I think Frank had grown to lean on me so extensively psychologically thatóthat I found it intolerable. And qualities that I should have recognized in Frank even before I married him had become more apparent to me.

Kasper: What were some of those qualities?

Jurney: Well, I guess the best illustration I can give is that while I was working on the Herald on the rim of the copy desk, I had to work from noon to nine p.m. or some such hours. Maybe it wasn't that late at night, but it was through the dinner hour. So Frank would come down and join me for dinner and we would go to a nearby cafeteria. And when he would get his change, if there was aóI guess it was a dime or a quarter that Franklin Roosevelt's image appeared onóhe would throw it back at the cashier and say, "This is counterfeit." And of course, the poor thing, she would look at it and it would look all right to her. "What do you mean it's counterfeit?" "Well, that's no good, it's got Roosevelt's picture on it." Well, it became more and more difficult to live with a man like that.

Kasper: I should imagine.

Jurney: We didn't really have a great deal in common after we left the Panama Canal, I guess. And, in the meantime, I had met Charles McKee in Charlotte andóso it seemed best to be divorced from Frank.

Kasper: Now, did Frank know about Charles?

Jurney: No. No.

Kasper: He didn't. Oh, so, okay. Because I was going to say, if he knew about Charles, why would he have contested the divorce when it was clear that you were in love with someone else and this marriage was not to your liking.

Jurney: I just really can'tóI know, he did not know about Charles. He certainly would have used that as a grounds toóthat I would have been denied a divorce, you see, legally. But I was in Detroit by the time the Florida Supreme Court said that my divorce was no good.

Kasper: Well now, what happened? If the Supreme Court denied you your divorce, did you eventuallyó

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[End Tape 1, Side A; Begin Tape 1, Side B]

Jurney: I just had to tell you the whole McKee thing.

Kasper: Yeah. Well, no that's interesting. [Tape interruption.]

Sure. Go right ahead.

Jurney: To summarize, the McKee family has been interesting, particularly to me, because of how they survived not only the Depression years but poverty of a lower class in Charlotte and how they made fruitful lives for themselves regardless of the discrimination that they faced.

Kasper: And what you're saying is, the contrast with the Neville McArthuró

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: ówhere everything was taken care of. Everything was sort of a fait accomplióit was done. And while you would have all the comfort and ease and even some of the glitz of the Miami Beach crowdó

Jurney: Oh, yes. Yes.

Kasper: óthat's not really the Dorothy Jurneyó

Jurney: No, and I think this is my curiosity, you see, that led me into this liaison. And this family has no bitterness. I've never talked to them about discrimination butóone of the most fascinating personalities in the family was Charles' older brother, Jimmy McKee, who, I think, went to work when he was nine years old and helped his mother support the family. And Jimmy eventually owned a nightclub in Charlotte which was used mostly by the blacks, but not entirely. And it was a great political gathering ground for guys who wanted to be elected in Charlotte, you see. And I kept telling Jimmy, "You should write your memoirs about this." And he said, "Oh, there were too many deals. I wouldn't be able toó"

Kasper: Divulge them?

Jurney: That's right. So he never did. He died first. But that was extremely interesting to me.

Kasper: Well, and what you're saying is your connection with Charles kind of strikes at the heart of the kind of person you are, which is, number one, a person who is very connected to other human beings and how they lived their lives. Sharon Nelton said to me that she remembered a conversation she had with you in Detroit when she was talking about how her marriage had failed. And she said not only were you very sensitive and understanding of the circumstances that she was talking about, but what was so characteristic of you was that you saw the story in it.

Jurney: [Laughter.]

Kasper: And she doesn't mean that in a cold, sort of, oh, this is interesting, write it up, but rather the warmth of how this is a human story. This will appeal to other people who need to know how people live their lives. And that your curiosity as a human being translated into your curiosity as a journalist and that you could listen with all the warmth and understanding that Dorothy Jurney has, but at the same time see the journalistic relevance, if you will.

Jurney: Yeah, that it was a common problem.

Kasper: A common problem.

Jurney: She was one of the women who put her husband through college and thenó

Kasper: Then he turned around and said, "Thank you, very much," and he disappeared.

Jurney: Right. Well, I think he continued to be dependent upon her.

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Kasper: And did you keep the staff or did you weed out a few people? Was everybody on your side? How did you manage a large, very competent staff at the Free Press?

Jurney: Well, I think that I must have been given the authority to hire a few people. I remember one of the women that I hiredóshe's working for the Detroit News nowóand her name is Helen Fogel. And Helen was in Lansing, I believe, and I can't remember how I learned about Helenóhow we got together. But I do remember that the thing that impressed me most about Helen Fogel in her application was that she had interpreted the quantum theory [Laughter]. And I thought, if anybody can do that, you know, they've got to be pretty smart. I still don't understand it.

Kasper: No, I still don't. I don't know how many times I've tried to.

Jurney: And Helen was an extremely competent writer and she was the one who did the stories on equal rights when the Equal Rights Commission came into being in the federal government. And I remember she is the one who went to the University of Michigan and talked to the women.

Kasper: Who were claiming discrimination.

Jurney: Yes. And Helen also was one who wrote about the women in the labor movement in Detroit.

Kasper: So you hired her and she came to work for you at the Free Press.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: And you were very pleased to have her.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: Yeah. Before we go on to why the Free Press was a highpoint in your life and the kinds of stories that you covered, were you also given a fair amount of free reign in terms of the managing of the department?

Jurney: Oh, yes. Absolutely.

Kasper: What did that free reign consist of? The hiring and firingó

Jurney: Well, I wouldn't have fired anybody simply on my own. I remember that we had a food editor who is now dead, who was very difficult and wasn't producing the kind of stories that I thought we should have. And I went to Derick Daniels about her. And Derick knew what I was talking about. I remember the day that the three of usóthis food editor and Derick and Iósat down and he asked her some questions and she absolutely hung herself. [Laughter.] She didn't give the right answers. He couldóit was evident. So that is more or less the way that I handled anybody that needed to be moved.

At the Miami Herald there was a woman, also now dead, who was a columnist, and I had worked with her on the Miami News. She was a very unusual woman who had married a Hungarian and couldn't stand the Hungarians and came back to this country. A very temperamental woman and did not take to editing. And I went to Lee Hills about her. And what he did was to move her out and put her in the newsroom where she and I had no day-to-day confrontations. We continued to use her column in the women's section of the Herald. No, I didn't fire anybody just by myself.

Kasper: No. Your way was to work with management to weed out people who were troublesome or not competent.

Jurney: Yes. And at the same time, there were people that management wanted to put in my department and they would discuss it with me. These weren't always the best people, but we did the best we could.

Kasper: Did you sometimes refuse to take them if you didn't want them?

Jurney: No, I don't think so.

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cards with one of them. The other one has died. But I got them to do a weekly column on new developments in the Detroit Public Schools.

Kasper: Aren't you smart.

Jurney: Well, and you know, it was great becauseóthey were not necessarily doing these things, but they knew that maybe in the fourth grade some teacher was doing something or other and we could report that. It was great.

Kasper: A wonderful idea.

Jurney: So this, I think, was how I learned there was some way in which the schools were trying to deal with homosexuality. So one of our reporters, and it probably was Helen Fogel, or it was Eileen Foley, who is now the city editor of the Toledo Blade, and Eileen has had a hard time getting ahead as a woman journalist. Anyway, we had the stories and they were a series, a brief series. And my managing editor at that time was Frank Angelo, who is still alive and retired and living in Detroit. Frank was a great Detroiter. He was Italian and he had made his way in the world in a city which recognized you for your accomplishment, not for your background. And Frank made a great point of that. And so Frank had great compassion, but he also was, I suppose, maybe Catholic background, although I'm not sure he was a Catholic, but anyway, his ethnic background closed his mind in certain ways so that when I reported that we were about to run this series on homosexuality and the program in the schools, ahh, he justówell, we couldn't do it.

Kasper: What year was this, do you rememberóvaguely?

Jurney: Well, let's see. I was there from what '59 to '69óor '71?

Kasper: '72.

Jurney: '72. This would have been early sixties, I think when homosexuality was first being talked about in newspapers and it still was a pretty skittish thing that you would use that word. So we had to put a tag line on our stories, you know, an over-line. That was the style of the Free Press headlines. Feature stories frequently had a tag line that would be usedóif this was a six-part series, it would be used each day for six daysóabove the main headline of the story. So we had to say "How to Raise More Manly Sons."

Kasper: That was your tag line?

Jurney: That was our tag line.

Kasper: Sort of protected the real essence of the story.

Jurney: Yes. That's right.

Kasper: Soft-pedaled it, if you will.

Jurney: That's right. And I don't know that we hadówe may have had to change some of the wording in the story. That, I do not recall as much as I do this, you know, instead of saying "courses on homosexuality" or something. Or "fighting homosexuality." We had to say, "How to Raise More Manly Sons."

Kasper: You had to turn it around.

Jurney: As a result of that particular series, we learned that the social workers in the city of Detroit were finding incest among the Kentucky families and others fromó

Kasper: The Appalachian families.

Jurney: Appalachia. Yes. That this was very prevalent in Detroit.

Kasper: Very prevalent.

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Kasper: William and Carma Hinton. They both spoke then and you covered that for the newspaper.

Jurney: That's right.

Kasper: How interesting.

Jurney: That may have been during the long strike that the Free Press underwent in 1967.

Kasper: What kind of a strike was that?

Jurney: Well, I suppose it was the typographical union that struck and the guild walked out as well. But I worked for nine months without any staff and without any newspaper.

Kasper: How did you do that?

Jurney: Well, I went in and looked at the mail each day and I think I'm the one who went to this meeting at Wayne State so I don't know that that ever got in the paper.

Kasper: Now, no newspaper was produced for nine months during the strike?

Jurney: That's right. That's right.

Kasper: Good lord. Were there any newspapers in Detroit at that time?

Jurney: I think there were community newspapers.

Kasper: But no major city-wide papers.

Jurney: No. No. Neither the News nor the Free Press. 1967 was a big year for me because Marie Anderson and I went to Greece that year and I had become violently ill on lobster which had been cooked in olive oil and I didn't know what was the matter with me, but it turned out to beónot appendicitis butó

Kasper: Gall bladder?

Jurney: Gall bladder. But before it was diagnosed, I came back to Detroit and was invited to go to this meeting I think I have mentioned, of American women editors and writers, along with Asian editors and writers at the University of Hawaii. It was sponsored jointly by the State Department, by Women In Communications, and by American Women in Radio and TelevisionóAWRT. And it came about because of a woman whose name is Meg Thompson, who was associated with the University of Hawaii. She had seen how the State Department had brought together male journalists from Asia for these programsóI'm trying to remember, it must have been at least a week longóand she thought there should be women journalists. So the national president of AWRT at that time was Fran Harris, who is retired and living in Detroit. (I had a Christmas card from her.) Fran was a broadcast journalist in Detroit and as I say national president of AWRT and active in Women In Communications. She told Meg Thompson that I should be invited to go. And I was. And after Marie and I had this trip to Greece, I went on out to Hawaii, not having a job that I had to be there everyday, you see.

Kasper: Because of the strike.

Jurney: Yes. And I was very careful. I don't know whether I knewóI must have known that this was a symptom of gall bladder trouble because I was very careful of what I ate when I was in Hawaii. But that event, that seminar out there, opened up all kinds of vistas to me. I traveled extensivelyóMarie and I thenótraveled extensively in Asia as a result of that.

Kasper: Oh, is that right?

Jurney: Marie was not there then, but I made theseóthere were ten Asian newspaper women and ten American newspaper women. The Asians included one from

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Kasper: So they came after it had been published in the paperó

Jurney: Oh, yes.

Kasper: óto express their anger on behalf of the Philippine government or the Philippine first family.

Jurney: That's right. One of the things that Imelda told me, and I probably put this in the storyóI don't have a copy of the story anymore, it may be in Missouri, I don't knowówas the fact that the Nixons had visited her and her husband and that she couldn't understand why Pat and Richard separated their bedrooms. They had, I think, his secretary or a secret serviceman or somebody in between. And she found this amazing. I probablyówhether I put that in the story or not, I don't know. [Laughter.] I learned from the Filipina newspaper woman I stayed with, with her and her familyóI can't think of her name now [Dorothy Jurney later recalled it was Eugenia Apostol]óthat there was a good deal of resentment already rising against Imelda and that she was grasping too much power. But she was a beautiful woman then. And I have pictures, of course, of her at that time. And then, later on, I had in my possession, a newspaper picture of her just before she and Ferdinand left the Philippines and how greed and otheró

Kasper: Nasty humanó

Jurney: óqualities had changed her face. A most remarkable change. And of course she had become a close friend of the second Mrs. Henry Ford and I was working in Detroit then, you see, andówhatever her name was, she was Italian, was of course aówe wrote about the Fords a great deal.

Kasper: Yeah. Did you write any other stories about your Asian trip, I mean, from any of the other countries?

Jurney: Yes. I remember writing some stories on Japan and the fact that theóthe funny things you rememberóthat the taxi cab drivers wore white gloves and that they had little bouquets on their dashboards. Oh, I know I wrote aboutó Marie and I took an automobile tourówell, some airline flights, but we went to the mountainous area by car and driver. And I remember some of the funny expressions that I'm sure I put in the story. We were in a mountainous area, and it was fall and the leaves were turning red, and the driver said, "See the led reaves." [Laughter.]

Kasper: The "led reaves" as opposed to the "red leaves."

Jurney: And then when we were down atóoh, the outdoor statue of Buddha, which is like seven stories tall or something. That must be an exaggeration, but it's an enormous outdoor statue and not very far south of Tokyo. The man who was taking us around and showing us the exhibits about the life of Buddha, he kept talking about Buddha's shroppas.

Kasper: Shroppas?

Jurney: Shroppas. It turned out to be slippers. [Laughter.] And he was so incensed because we couldn't understandó

Kasper: What he was saying.

Jurney: óshroppas. He said, "But the English people understand. You Americans don't." I trust I put some of these things in the story.

Kasper: Now tell me, back home, before this Asian trip and before the strike, were you covering the civil rights movement in your section of the paper? Or some of the fallout from the civil rights movement?

Jurney: Well, I seem to remember that we played up and interviewedóI particularly remember a black woman who was president of a UAW local. Now this meant that she headed up several thousand workers. I can almost see her picture. I think her name was Ann Jones, but I'm not sure. Then there was of course the Detroit woman who was slain in Mississippi.

Page 73

Kasper: Now what would you make over? What kinds of things did you make over?

Jurney: Well, this was for any important event. And it probably was for a large social function. It might beócertainly it was when Mrs. Edsel Ford gave one million or five million dollars to the Detroit Institute of Arts and there was this big social event to which Imelda Marcos came. She and I talked and she said, "Naughty, naughty," to me.

Kasper: Did she really?

Jurney: Yes, she did.

Kasper: Imelda Marcos said, "Naughty, naughty" to you. [Laughter.]

Jurney: Yes. Yes. I think that was the only conversation I had with her.

Kasper: And of course she was referring to the fact that you published your interview with her.

Jurney: That's right. That Ióyou know, it wasn't a controlled press. I could write what she had said.

Kasper: Much to her dismay.

Jurney: Right. My escort that night was John S. Knight's grandson, John Knight, III, who was murdered while I was working on the Detroit Free Press or was itóno, I had gone toówhere the heck was he murdered? He was murdered in Philadelphia. And I guess I was working there then, yeah. But anyway, John took me to the party. Of course, he was much, much younger, but that was the kind of story we would make over for. We would have photographers there. Jeanne Whittaker came back and wrote the story and I may have gone back, or maybe I delegated it, I had to have somebody there to do the make-up, to lay out the page, to decide what size picture it would be, how big the headline would be. And then to see that it got through the composing room and met the deadline, whatever it was, probably eleven o'clock at night. And so that whenóit was then distributed. The early editions of the Free Press went out to suburban and upstate Michigan by train and bus, but for theóthe makeovers appeared in the edition that was distributed in the immediate Detroit area, both inner city and the immediate suburbs.

Kasper: And so what you're saying about makeovers that's unusual is that normally the staff and the women's department, or the For and About Women's section, would go home at five o'clock.

Jurney: That's right.

Kasper: And whatever was written was what would go into the paper.

Jurney: That's right.

Kasper: But what you're saying is that you began to treat the women's section as news.

Jurney: That's right.

Kasper: Which entitled it to have staff at night who could make changes in a column or columns that reflected the changes in the news.

Jurney: Yes. Or in theónot just a column, but in a news story.

Kasper: Yeah, I meant in the actual news story, not a regular column feature.

Jurney: Yes. That's right. I'm not sure that othersóI don't know, maybe the Washington Post might have done something like that.

Kasper: Well, it's very important. At first blush it doesn't seem like any big deal, so you changed something, so what? But it's a very important phenomenon in American journalism.

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Jurney: Well, Cheri participatingóthe Detroit Santa Lucia participating in these events and what it was like in Helsinki. I think I mentioned yesterday this large square in the dead of winter which is pretty (blank) cold, and these little kiosks where they were selling flowers.

Kasper: Right. You did.

Jurney: I described all of that. We had a trip to a pottery. I've got some of it at home. I'll think of that later.

Kasper: In Sweden?

Jurney: Yes. Oh, no. I have to stop and think which country it was. I think this was Finland where they made dishes, not just pottery, but porcelain as well. And they had a day nursery for the women workers and I wrote about that.

Kasper: Oh, wonderful.

Jurney: You know, back in the early sixties they were just beginning to talk about that in this country. I think the stories out of Stockholm were very largely about the festivities in which Cheri participated.

Kasper: Do you remember writing other stories on women's issues that have become even more relevant today? You mentioned the day care center that you wrote about in Scandinavian countries, and, of course, as you pointed out, day care was something that we barely even started talking about. Some of the other issues that are real contemporary today, do you remember covering them before they were the big issues that they are today?

Jurney: Well, we covered the women of the UAW quite thoroughly. And women's jobs in the auto industry.

Kasper: From what angle? When you covered theiró

Jurney: Well, what they did, how they worked on the line, I presume, although I don't really remember any stories about women being foremen or supervisors in any way, but I'm sure Olga Madar would have said something about this. And I met Olga Madaróbecause I can remember, this was on a second floor of a hotel that I had lived in for a few weeks when I first went to Detroitóthere was a meeting in which I sat next to Olga. I can't remember what the subject of the meeting was, but this is how I met Olga Madar.

Kasper: Is she still alive, do you know?

Jurney: I think she is.

Kasper: Yeah. And is she still in Detroit, too?

Jurney: I think so.

Kasper: Yeah. It's been years since I've heard her name mentioned. Well, I think probably the last time that I saw her was in '75 or '76, and then, you know, I would see her name in columns in the paper, in stories in the paper, through maybe the early eighties oró

Jurney: Hmmm, that late?

Kasper: óor earlyó'80, '81. But I haven't seen her name since.

Jurney: No. She'd be retired. Yeah.

Kasper: Yeah. I should have asked Dorothy Haener when we were all together last spring.

Jurney: Yes, that's right. I probably did ask her, but don't remember the answer. Catherine East might know.

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Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: óand could be included in your section?

Jurney: There was always some way to angle it so that you could justify it being in there. But I would always discuss it with the city desk. "Are you covering this?" you know. "Are you going to these lectures on China?" No, they hadn't thought of it or they didn't want to or they didn't have the personnel. So I'd say, "Okay, we'll do it."

Kasper: Did you get much feedback in the form of letters to the editors from women in the community about articles you did write or what they would want you to write if you hadn't covered it?

Jurney: Oh, I think it was more not written feedback as it was telephone calls. General recognition. I think Women In Communications, which was strong in Detroit, I got a lot of support there and recognition for what we were doing.

Kasper: In what way? You were all women in, not just journalism, but in broadcast news and so forth.

Jurney: Yes. But I think they admired what I was doing. They, you know, they would just say, "That was a great story you had on something or other." And then, as I say, I got elected president twice.

Kasper: While you were in Detroit.

Jurney: Yes. I also was a HeadlineróWomen In Communications Headlineróboth in Miami and in Detroit.

Kasper: What's a Women In Communications Headliner?

Jurney: It was an annual awardórecognition of your work.

Kasper: And you won that twiceóonce in Miami and once in Detroit.

Jurney: Yes. There were others. In Florida, the Florida Women's Press Club, had awards every year, and I won that several timesóExcellence of the Section. They also had other awards for writing and that kind of thing, but I won for Excellence of the Section. We got a Michigan Women's Press Club started which I still am a member of. I can't remember that I won any award there. All during those later years in Miami and certainly in Detroit, I was going to the API to make talks.

Kasper: When you won the Headliner Awards, were they for specific stories that you had written or had written for the section?

Jurney: No, it was for general excellence. I also won the national Headliner Award for Women In Communications one year which was awarded at the convention in Madison, Wisconsin, I think. That was back in the fifties.

Kasper: Again, that was for general excellence of the section.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: Do you remember some of the other stories that were written about women in the various fields that I've run throughówhether its science or education or politics? Your purview was so large.

Jurney: Oh, yes. We always did stories on women in politics because it didn't seem to me that a woman who was campaigning for state representative or for the city commission got a fair shake from the news side. So we just said, we will also do a story on her. We did stories on wives of the governors. I wasn't too keen on that because I would rather be doing a story on the woman who was in politics than the wife, but we did it.

Kasper: You wrote stories on Martha Griffiths too, didn't you?

Page 79

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: In Michigan in her own right.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: I didn't know that. What had she done?

Jurney: Don't pin me down. [Laughter.] I think she was more George Romney's wife than she was an individual leader, but she would have been like Barbara Bushóshe was not an Eleanor Rooseveltóshe would have been supportive in maybe the symphony, maybe educational programs, things like that. I can see her walking out of a building somewhere, what the occasion was, I don't know.

Kasper: Now the UAW has always been recognized as a forward looking union whose values and even policies were pretty progressive in terms ofó

Jurney: Very progressive.

Kasper: Exactlyóin terms of, you know, human need and human interests. You mentioned earlier that you wrote that story about day care inówas it Finland?

Jurney: I think it was Finland.

Kasper: Finland. Do you remember covering those so-called "family issues," because now, I know, for instance, I worked for the UAW on a national health care campaign. They had the Committee for National Health Insurance in Washington, D.C., and I worked for them for several years, before I went to IWY, actually, and I don't remember that they specifically advocated things like, you know, equal pay or on-site child care for womenóand men, for that matter. Do you remember whether any of those issues that are now so prominent in the news, whether theyó

Jurney: I think day care was already an issue in Detroit because I remember Kurt Luedtke considering whether the Free Press could establish a day care for its women employees. But the requirements were so high. You had to have so many feet of space and it had to have so many windows and that kind of thing.

Kasper: Fire doors andóyeah.

Jurney: Yes. That it was not, he didn't think it was feasible for the Free Press to do that. Yes, we were writing about that.

Kasper: You were.

Jurney: Oh, yes.

Kasper: And equal pay issues, were thoseó

Jurney: Oh, very much.

Kasper: ópension rights for women, were those issues that you covered as well?

Jurney: Oh, yes. The equal pay, because this was the EEOC?

Kasper: EEOC? Yeah. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission?

Jurney: Yes. And there were all kinds of suits or threatened suits by individual working women in Detroit. And the newsroom simply had more than they could handle. They just left that to us.

Kasper: So you would cover some of those issues.

Jurney: Oh, yes.

Kasper: Equal employment. Equal pay. Day care.

Jurney: Absolutely.

Page 81

Jurney: And they were living together at the Whittier Apartments in Detroit. Henry presumably was living in the Ford Motor Company rooms for executives who had to stay overnight. But, I think he was spending most of his time at the Whittier. That was very delicate and very difficult. And I think we tiptoed through that, but we did make some recognition of the factócertainly recognition that Henry and Christina (whatever her last name was) were attending this function or that function together. And Anne and Charlotte, and his first wife, had moved to New York.

Kasper: Now, you became assistant managing editor of the Detroit Free Press.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: Now, what were the circumstances under which you moved from women's editor to assistant managing editor? How did that come about?

Jurney: I think it came about because I was reading a story about Who's Who. The national publication sent a story about Who's Who in Detroit. And there were several Detroit newspaperóFree Pressómen who were mentioned and I was not among them. And I went to Derick and said, "Why am I not in Who's Who?" "Oh, would you like to be?" said he. And I said, "Of course, I would like to be." So I did indeed. He wrote to whoever and ever since I have been in Who's Who in America.

It was about the same time that there was a rising movement that more women should have positions of authority in newspapers and somehow it became known that I would like to belong to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. And the only way, the lowest position that was open to man or woman, was to be an assistant managing editor.

Kasper: In other words, you couldn't join ASNEó

Jurney: On your own.

Kasper: óunless you were a part of management.

Jurney: Yes. And your newspaper had to nominate you. And I think that's really how I became an assistant managing editor was to belong to ASNE. And about that timeóI had very good support on the desk at the Free Press. I not only had excellent writers, but Bill Baker, who is a vice president of Knight-Ridder and has been for several years, he was a copy readeróan assistant to me, Jennie Buckner, who is now assistant to Jim Batten, who is head of Knight-Ridder. I had known Jim at the Charlotte Observer when I think Jim was a reporter. Of course, I had worked there only spasmodically and for short periods of time. And then I guess the Knight-Ridder organization found that Batten had corporate potential and he was brought to Detroit and sort of understudied a number of jobs and came into the women's department for a week or two weeks to see how I was running that, oróyeah, what happened in thereó

Kasper: Should I turn this off?

Jurney: I think so. [Tape interruption.]

Kasper: Tell me, what were your duties as assistant managing editor? You were there briefly doing that.

Jurney: Somewhere in there, in addition to producing the women's section, I also produced, or it was under my direction, The Detroit Magazine, which was the weekly supplement.

Kasper: Called The Detroit Magazine?

Jurney: Yes. And Bill Baker handled that principally for me. After the strike, I think the Magazine went under the direction of the features editor. I guess I was nearing retirement age and also I had become an assistant managing editor so that the Knight-Ridder organization would have a token woman in the ASNE, you see. So that I was more or less promoted to develop special sections.

Page 83

felt it could sell the most newspapers and gather the most advertising. And I probably would not be sympathetic to that approach.

Kasper: What was their approach that youó

Jurney: That you go to the wealthy suburbs and you try to report the things that will interest them, therefore, you will attract the advertisers. I would have been resistant to that. Also I was not sufficiently acclimated in Philadelphia to know how to report from all the various suburbs.

The Inquirer has solved that problem by having "Neighbors sections" twice a week so that here I get the Main Line coverage of Montgomery County, Delaware County and Chester County. That would have been difficult. I guess I would have attempted for general interest stories that would have interested Main Liners and people that lived in Germantown, the social area above Germantown, through writing about them working for historical interests. Historyópreservation of historyówas big in Philadelphia. Another interest, of course, would have been the private clubs, and we did cover that through Ruth Seltzer. My job with Ruth was to cut her down in space. So, instead of having all of the front page every Sunday, she would have maybe two columns of type.

Kasper: But you were hampered by the fact that you didn't have enough competent reporters to cover other areas.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: And, by the fact that you were new to the cityó

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: And your wishes were not coinciding perfectly with management's.

Jurney: Management. And there was a lack of communication, probably both on purpose and the fact that Gene Roberts, who is a very fine editorówhat he has done with the Inquirer is marvelousóbut Gene Roberts came alive at nightóat night only, at about nine o'clock, and I had long since gone home. And the executives, the lesser executives, who stayed on and worked with Gene until one or two in the morning, they understood what Gene wanted and they got their points of view across. And although Gene Roberts and I lived not very far apart out in Wayne, we never did communicate very well.

Kasper: So did you take voluntary retirement after, what was it, two years?

Jurney: No, it was understood that I would retire in the summer of '75. And Gene was very nice about it because the ASNE was going to have its second trip to China and I very much wanted to go to China andóCreed Blackówell, maybe I shouldn't go into that story.

Kasper: Oh, go ahead. [Laughter.]

Jurney: Creed Black, who was head of the editorial sectionónot the news section, but the editorial pages of the Inquireróhe wanted toóand I guess it has a bearing on newspapering at that timeóhe was the one who was working to get the Chinese to invite the second group of editors. The first group had gone in about '73, early on.

Kasper: You hadn't gone with that group?

Jurney: Oh no. And Ed Murray, whom I mentioned earlier, had said to me while we were both working for the Free Press, "Dorothy, the Chinese newspaper people and officials said 'Where are your women?'" So, I knew from that that they would welcome newspaper women. When I learned that Creed Black was about to arrange this second ASNE trip, I said, "Creed, I want to go." He said, "Oh, I don't think the Chinese would want any women." Well, I knew better, but I think I kept my mouth shut, which was my way, you see. However, Tim Hays, who is owner and publisher of the paper in Riverside, California, was president of the ASNE and had that year asked me to head up the nominations committee of ASNE.

Page 85

That really is the only other social issue that sticks out in mind that we did early on. There must have been others.

Kasper: I'm sure your papers in Missouri reflect some of that. In fact, that was one of the things I wanted to ask you. The materials that you've sent to Missouri, were there actually copies of stories that were written in the newspapers?

Jurney: Some of them were. Not so much. I had not kept clippings of pages from the Herald or the Free Press. I think there were stories that I had written on China and elsewhere. There was correspondence, memos. The woman who is in charge of the library there said, "Just send us everything you have and we'll weed it out."

Kasper: We'll sort it through.

Jurney: Yes. And this is a program, as you may know, established by Marjorie Paxson.

Kasper: No, I don't think I did know that.

Jurney: Jean Gaddy Wilson, in seeking money for New Directions for News. Marjorie had told me that at the time she retired from Gannett, she was kind of forced into early retirement. But they were so anxious for her not to make any trouble over this, that they gave her a very good retirement. She was a publisher in OklahomaóMuskogee, Oklahoma.

Kasper: Muskogee, Oklahoma. Yeah. [Tape interruption.]

Jurney: ótold me that her tax accountant was a little worried about the money she had and that she would need to set up some funds and she was thinking of giving some to the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri and some to Rice University, where she went her first two years. So Jean went down to see her hoping to get some money for New Directions for News, but Marjorie needed to establish a kind of thing that Marie Anderson has in which the school receives your money and you get a certain amount of interestóI think it was set at seven percent interest. Marie gave considerable money to Duke University.

Kasper: Oh, I didn't know that. She hadn't mentioned that.

Jurney: And she's been active in Duke alumna things and in the donors' group, particularly. I think Marie probably gave a lot of money. So Marj said, "Well, it won't work out with New Directions for News because you can't keep it for a period of years and pay me interest. New Directions has to spend it now." So Jean worked it out so that she could establish the National Women and Media Collection in the historical library at University of Missouri in Columbia. And a number of newswomen have been encouraged to send their papers.

Kasper: And that's where yours are.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: The National Women and Media Collection.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: We left off right before you retired and the second ASNE trip to China.

Jurney: Oh, yes.

Kasper: Do you want to pick up there and then we can move on. I wanted to move on to things like IWY and the Woman's Network and New Directions for News and so forth and so on. But would you like to pick up there and then we'll move forward?

Jurney: Well, I was delighted when Tim Hays from Riverside made it possible for me to be part of the party. The members of the board of directors of ASNE and some committee chairmen were invited to make this trip. I guess all the committee

Page 87

interesting and was the subject of one of my stories. In Shanghai, we went to a school. I think it was the equivalent of a high school. And we were always entertained at tea and in a rather large room in which óof course the structures have changed so much nowóbut there was always the secretary of the Communist party, and the vice chairman of the Communist party. They were always there. And then the young man who was theógee, I don't know whether he was called the superintendent of the school, I think he wasóand he was obviously a peasant and obviously did not haveóI think it's hot in here even thoughó

Kasper: I could open that window a little bit more. Go ahead. Keep on going. I'll take care of it.

Jurney: It was obvious that he did not have much educational background for running a school. And I think that he admitted that he had been through the equivalent of the fifth grade, but he was chosen, you see, because he was a peasant and it was very important for these institutions to be run by peasants and workers. We asked him how he managed to run a school of higher learning. Well, he depended upon the teachers to help him. But I know that was the subject of one of my stories.

Kasper: Yesówas the fact that he was the head of the school although he, himself, was not all that well educated.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: How long were you in China? How many weeks were you all there?

Jurney: I guess only a total of three weeks.

Kasper: Well you covered a lot of ground.

Jurney: Yes. And then we went down to southern China through the Li River Valley which is I guess a kind of aóI hate to use the word "resort," but I can't think of anything else. Maybe the Chinese now do use it for a resort.

Kasper: Now, when you came back from China, you didn't actually go back to work at the Philadelphia Inquirer, right?

Jurney: Yes, I did.

Kasper: You did. For a while?

Jurney: Yes I did. Yeah.

Kasper: For how much longer were you there?

Jurney: I would say two or three months because I wrote my stories while I was there and Creed Black also was on this trip and he was writing stories so that we had to synchronize these and not duplicate.

Kasper: Your respective China stories.

Jurney: Yeah.

Kasper: But it wasn't long afteró

Jurney: After that, that I could retire.

Kasper: óafter that, that you retired.

Jurney: That's right.

Kasper: And then not long after that that you went to work for the International Women's Year Commission.

Jurney: Yes. I guess I was still working for the Inquirer when I suppose it was Catherine East called me and said that they were looking for somebody to do the report of International Women's Year and would I come down and talk to Virginia

Page 89

And they were holding public hearings in the State Department. And I could not go to work for them before the fall, possibly October of '75. This report was to be ready for President Ford on July 4 of 1976. First off, the whole structure was new to me. They were developing such interesting material in these hearings that I wanted to alert the newspapers to the hearings, but, for some reason, Mildred Marcy, who headed the staffó

Kasper: The Commission Staff.

Jurney: The Secretariat, we were called, didn't want to open them up. But there were loads of good stories that could have come out of there. So I just tried to absorb as much as I could. The committees were still meeting. They had not brought in their recommendations. I was really being very pressed to produce this material and I was getting a lot of support from the staff. People were very good, staff members, and many of them were capable of writing these sections themselves, maybe with a little suggestion from me or a little editing or something.

Kasper: And polishing.

Jurney: Yes. So it was in the spring, and I have written a memo on this that I might get for you or send to you. Oh, and we had several meetings of the staff and committees in small groups and the media committee was headed by Pat Carbine. I came to, somehow, she and IóI really wasn't very much aware of it, but she didn't like the approach I was taking particularly in regard to the media findings. Do you remember Kathy Bonk?

Kasper: Yes.

Jurney: Well, Kathy was part of that. She probably was the staff person.

Kasper: Yeah, I think she was. In fact, I know she was.

Jurney: Kathy was kind of caught between the two of us because I think Kathy agreed with me but she was working under Pat Carbine. There were someóand I suppose I said some things that didn't sit very well, I don't recall this, but I did not realize that I had made a real enemy of Pat Carbine, and probably some others on the committee. And we finally came to an agreement that Kathy and Pat would write that section and that I would have nothing to do with it.

Kasper: And which section was this?

Jurney: Media.

Kasper: This was the media section only. This was where youó

Jurney: Yes. Just the media. But in the early spring, we had a full meeting of the commission and the staff and I presented, I think, the tentative edited pieces of the final report, some of which had already been circulated and some of the women knew about, but I was dumbfounded to find that there was great resentment to the way I was presenting this report. Jill Ruckelshaus presided over the meeting. I got no support from Jill and I was under the impression that I was doing it the way she had directed me to do itóthrough the secretary. So that commission meeting broke up at mid-day, I guess, and, yes, at eleven or eleven thirty, we had a meeting with Jill down in the IWY offices. And Jill summarized the opposition to the way the report was being written and pretty quickly she said, "Dorothy, I direct you to do it all over and do it in a different way."

Kasper: What is it that she objected to?

Jurney: She didn't likeó

Kasper: Those exemplars?

Jurney: óthe Wall Street Journal approach, yes, which I thought I was following her direction. Well, I had already been to a representative of the Government Printing Office. They were going to print this [the Commission Report]. We had drawn up aóand I can't remember who did the cover of the report but, you know,

Page 91

Jurney: I used to have a copy of that Houston report, but I think I've given it awayóI think I sent it to Missouri.

Kasper: I have several copies of bothó"To Form A More Perfect Union" and "The Spirit of Houston"ówhich was the final report. Well, anyway, I'm not much help on the front end because I'm having trouble remembering the details of the back end when I was more involved. So I don't know who the woman in New York was.

Jurney: So Marjorieó

Kasper: Well, wait a minute, maybe I do. Was it Lettie Pogrebin?

Jurney: No, I don't think it was Lettie. No, I think if it had been Lettie it might have been worked all right. It was somebody else. Anyway, Marj Paxson had the job of trying to pull this all together and still get it done before July 4th. And Marj found so many errors in this rewrite that she convinced Jill Ruckelshaus and Mildred Marcy, and whoever else had some say, to forget this New York writer and to go with what I had written. And that's how it came out. Now, Marj had a lot to do with smoothing off the rough edges of the report and getting it physically to the government printers. And I had disappeared by that time. I asked Mildred, I said, "Mildred, I would really like to stay on until this goes to the printers." And Mildred said, "No, I want you to leave. Leave now." So, I left within a week or two, I think, after that.

Kasper: So these were not pleasant circumstances by any means.

Jurney: No. They were very uncomfortable for me. And it had beenóI had enjoyed it up to that, except it had been hard work and not enough time given to it.

Kasper: Yeah. I think everybody was under the gun. I know I was under a lot of pressure to produce all the health material in a fairly short period of time.

Jurney: I think the reportóI got a lot of compliments on the report, and I have given away the one in which many of the Commission membersó

Kasper: Signed?

Jurney: Signed and said good things about the report.

Kasper: It was much better written than the "Spirit of Houston," I can tell you that.

Jurney: Well, I'm glad to hear that. Because it was pretty much my work.

Kasper: I find when I go back to refer to some of that stuff, I go back to "To Form a More Perfect Union," rather than the "Spirit of Houston," because all of the ideas that we were pursuing and exploring and so forth are much better stated, even though you would think the Houston report would have the benefit of the state conferences and the Houston meeting and all the research and the thought that had gone into it. I think in many ways, "To Form a More Perfect Union," states the issues in much clearer and direct ways than the Houston report did. Now, I would attribute that now, of course, knowing that you were the editor, in large part, to the writing, and also knowing that whoever it was who did write the "Spirit of Houston" in its final form, we were not pleased that she was doing it. And I don't remember who it was. I tend to forget that kind of thing. [Dorothy Jurney remembered and added later that she was Caroline Bird.]

Jurney: Yeah. She had publishedóshe had done a book or two on women.

Kasper: That's right. Yes.

Jurney: Yeah. And we did itó

Kasper: We thought she was good. I remember that. We thought she was good and in the end we were dismayed.

Page 93

And then there is the section which takes eachóI don't think they were called committeesóeach commissioner had a particular areaó

Kasper: Area of expertise or issues. They were called issue areas, or something like that, as I remember. Right.

Jurney: Yes. And that was not my work (but some of the back part of the book was also my work) for instance IWY hired MOR [Market Opinion Research] out of Detroit and Ruth Bryant. No, Barbara Bryant, who is now the director of the Census Bureau. Barbara Bryant, out of Detroit. And I had known Barbara through Women In Communications. She lived in Ann Arbor, I think, still does, a winter home, or when she's not in Washington, they're keeping the Ann Arbor home. I had a Christmas card from her. She had directed a very fine research project of American womenówhere they were in 1975, '76. And we used a great deal of that material in the book. I believe that I simply edited that material down to size. I don't think we printed all. I may even have the MOR Report, still, if I didn't send it to Missouri. So I'm delighted to know that Barbara Bryant has now been made head of the Census Bureau, and I expect big things out of this Census. It turns out that her husband worked for Bush in Michigan. I guess that's how the President knew about her. I didn't know that she was political in any way and I doubt that she herself was.

Kasper: Well, and it's not a political appointment, I don't believe. I mean she must have been quite competent to get it.

Jurney: Oh, yes. Very competent. And I watched Market Opinion Research grow from a small organization there in Michigan until it is nationally recognized today.

Kasper: Now, when you left IWY, what was next on your agenda here? I know you got involved with a number of things. You were a founder and a director of the Woman's Network in Wayne. Was that one of the next things that you did?

Jurney: Yes, it was. But let me intersperse here that I was indeed invited to go to the presentation of "To Form a More Perfect Union," at the White House. I was not introduced as having been the editor of the report, but that was all right. There were two interesting things that happened after that. I guess, Mildred saw to it that I was a delegate to Houston and I did indeed go. And when I was standing in the registration line there at the hotel, and it was an interminable line, and I guess I was tired and looked tired or something, who should come by but Jill Ruckelshaus, and said, "Come with me, Dorothy, I will see you get registered right away." So, she did. And she was just as pleasant as she could be. So, we sort of made up.

Then, under the Woman's Network, which Catherine particularly had suggested to me, she saidóoh, and I have to also say that as the new Commission under Bella Abzug was getting organized and planning for Houston, my good friend, Hilary WhittakeróI mentioned Jeanne Whittaker on the Detroit Newsóher sister, Hilary, who was with the Peace Corps and is still in Africa with the Peace Corps, Hilary was between jobs at the time, and she was very interested in going to work for IWY and did under Bella Abzug's tenure. But Hilary thought that I was needed to direct news stories in the various states for the Houston conference. And, as you know, most every state had its own women's conference. For those states which seemed not to have done much in a way to arouse newspaper interest, I went back to Washington, living with Hilary Whittaker again, in her house up near Capitol Hill. I was in touch with the editors on various papers throughout the country.

Kasper: And letting them know that all this work was being done.

Jurney: Yes, that there was a state conference, or had been a state conference. That there was an agenda for these conferences. That various findings had been presented. And these would all be gathered together for the Houston conference. I can't remember how long I worked. I was then called a consultant rather than a staff member, and I presume I was there for six months or longer preparing for the Houston meeting. As a result of that, Catherine said, "You know so many editors around the country, and you know so many women in newspaper work, you ought to do something with that." Well, I guess simultaneously, Anne, I had started the study of the number of women who had any kind of an executive or administrative post on all of the newspapers in the country, regardless of their size. And I used the

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Jurney: Yeah. Their monthly Bulletin. They devoted anywhere from, I think, three to four pages to it each time.

Kasper: Oh, really?

Jurney: It usually came outó

Kasper: Once a year over a period of ten years.

Jurney: Yes. That's right. And I think it wasó

Kasper: It was about 1976 to 1986, is that correct?

Jurney: It might have been seventyówell, we had to get through the Houston conference. I think I probablyó

Kasper: That was '77. Yeah.

Jurney: Okay. It was probably the year after that.

Kasper: '78óthat it began.

Jurney: '78.

Kasper: And so you did that as recently as two years ago, or a year or so ago.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: Wow.

Jurney: But when you count the first year and the tenth year, you know, you pick up a year in there.

Kasper: Yeah, right. It's almost like eleven.

Jurney: Right.

Kasper: Did you see any grand changes in your data over that time.

Jurney: Yes. It did. It grew. And I could not tell you. I don't retain those figures. The National Women'sónot the National Women's Press Club, but what is the group that is down in Missouri now? National Federation of Press Women. It is located in some small town in the center of Missouri. And a woman by the name of Wolfe is their executive director. And I passed on my material to her and they took it over, and Jean Wilson played a role in this. I think when I told Jean, having completed ten years, I wasn't going to go forward with it, she talked the ASNE into paying her a small sum to do it the next year. And then, Laura Wolfe?óLois Wolfe? I think it's Lois Wolfeócame to see me during the summertime. She taught a journalism class, maybe at Rutgers? Somewhere in New Jersey. And I indeed turned over all of my material to her and I think I had given Jean copies of it. And so, that National Federation of Press Womenóa group that's made up of newspaper women but mainly on smaller newspapers throughout the countryóis carrying it on.

Kasper: Oh, wonderful. So the study goes on.

Jurney: Yes. I haven't seen it for this year.

Kasper: Does it have a name that has lingered with it, stays with it?

Jurney: I don't think there's any common name for it. It's merely a study of where women stand in the top administrative news jobs. I confined it to news. Jean Wilson, during this period in which I was doing my study, Jean conceived the idea of where did women stand on newspapers in regard to the 21st century. And she got ASNE to back her on that. But she studied women in all areas.

Kasper: Not just women as managing editors.

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Kasper: And more women who have had their start and their stay at Gannett.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: Gannett has placed more women and been more receptive to women in journalism than any other group I can think of.

Jurney: That's right. And Knight-Ridder, realizing they were being eclipsed by Gannett in this regard, finally got around to getting women in top jobs too, and they do haveósince Knight-Ridder has, by and large, larger newspapers than Gannett, although Gannett, with the Detroit News and, not Louisville, but somewhere else in Kentucky or TennesseeóNashville BanneróNashville. That's a Gannett.

Kasper: The Nashville Banner?

Jurney: I think so. John Siegenthaler is theóI'm not sure they have any woman in the top job there, but anyway, they do have some larger newspapers now. I attribute Gannett's desire to hire women not only probably because they could get them cheaper than men, and I think that's trueóor was trueóyou could never get anybody on Gannett to admit anything like that, but Al Neuharth was a perceptive young editor, then his second wife was the, as you probably know, the legislator in Florida who was a woman's rights person.

Kasper: Paula Hawkins? No.

Jurney: No. Anyway, that was his second marriage. And she was very influential with him and it was about that time when Al was married to whatever-her-name-is [Dorothy Jurney later recalled it was Lori Wilson], that they began actively to recruit women.

Kasper: I see. I was also told that one of the reasons Al Neuharth was very sympathetic to recruiting women was because as a young child his father had, I think, died when he was fairly young and his mother had to work very hard to support him as a child. And he was very sympathetic to the fact that she was both a working woman and a mother and struggled a great deal.

Jurney: I think I've heard that story. Yes, I've heard it.

Kasper: So he's very sympathetic to women's issues, women's plight and women working.

Jurney: Yeah. Yes. I think Al was a very strong supporter of women. And because Gannett did so well and some of my stories in the ASNE would point to, would say, that the Gannett Company had so many women publishers and so many women executive editors, and so forth. Knight-Ridder had such and such a number and all you had to do, see, you know, that Knight-Ridder maybe had three and Gannett had thirteen. And then there were younger men, more perceptive men like Jim Batten who came along to run Knight-Ridder.

Kasper: Let me ask you was there also some connection between the ASNE study that you did on women managing editors, the one that continuesó

Jurney: Directing editors.

Kasper: Directing editors, and the initiative that you took a little bit later on after this with Catherine East to do the New Directions for News. It sounds like the two are somewhat linked. You were obviously interested in newspapers and women.

Jurney: That's true. I'm not sure there was any direct link there, but Catherine and Mildred were interested to find out what role newspapers had playedó

Kasper: Mildred Marcy again?

Jurney: Yes. And Virginia.

Kasper: Virginia Allan?

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Kasper: Hmmm, no. Because the study was published in '83. So this must have been like '81 that you began the work. [Dorothy Jurney remembered and added later that 1979 is the correct year.]

Jurney: Yeah. Yes. So it was '82 then, I think, when we gatheredóthe students had done their studies on each one of these 1,500 clippings. And this woman at Cornell, she's no longer there, she went to Alaska or some university or something like that, she ran them through the computer and we got thirteen pounds of computer printouts. And I had never seen a computer printout, you know, I scarcely knew what a computer was. And Catherine and I divided up the subject matter. I took three with which I would be most familiar.

Kasper: Which three did you work on?

Jurney: The stories that dealt with International Women's Year decade meeting in Copenhagen; the Houston conference; andóit probably was equal pay for work of comparable value.

Kasper: Hmmm, so comparable worth.

Jurney: Yeah. And Catherine took ERA, family, education, which was phrased in the format ofóthere was some executive order as well as some legislation which dealt with educationóequal opportunity in education.

Kasper: Oh, Title IX.

Jurney: Yes. That's right. Title IX. It started with women in sports activities, I believe.

Kasper: That's right. Exactly.

Jurney: But was extended to women throughout the university.

Kasper: Exactly.

Jurney: And I think Catherine did those three. And I think we exchanged our reports and made minor adjustments. And, now let's see, how did we get the money to pay for that? I guess I got the Miami Heraldówell, we got some money from the Gannett Foundation. It's printed in the report.

Kasper: And I remember reading it. And there is someone at the Herald, a cartoonist who did that wonderful front to the report, you know, with theó

Jurney: Yes. A Pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist.

Kasper: Oh, that front cover of that "New Directions for News" report is just mind blowing, you know, all the men sitting at the various news desks, all in their spiffy three-piece suits and ties, and, you know, one is the city news and one is foreign news and one is sports, and I can't remember all the others, and then you get to the last desk, which is women's news, and there's this neanderthal character [Laughter] sitting at this rock with an ancient typewriter, you know, and it justóif there was ever a perfect example of how one picture is worth a thousand wordsó

Jurney: Right.

Kasper: óthere is it. Now, I remember, I think it was printedówas it printed at the Herald too?

Jurney: It was printed at the Herald. I talked them into doing it.

Kasper: Yeah.

Jurney: Actually, the rundown on the contributions to putting this report together does not include the total amount of money that the Herald gave. I think they're listed only at $5,000 and it came in maybe at $15,000, so that the total amount of money raised was more like $45,000, and there was no way to correct this, it was already printed.

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Jurney: No! Okay. But the editor and writer has to be smart enough to generate leads and present the material in a striking way.

Kasper: Yes! And what I thought was most powerful about that study was that somebody finally stood up and argued the presumption that in order to have a hook in a newspaper story, it doesn't need to be confrontational.

Jurney: That's right.

Kasper: Or conflictual. There are all kinds of hooks, and that's what you were saying.

Jurney: Show how important it is to the family, to divorced women, whether they get child support or not and how they can go about to get it and what government is doing to help them. This is also important to the taxpayer because unless the absent husband or absent wife is payingó

Kasper: Someone else will, and it will be the taxpayer.

Jurney: That's right.

Kasper: So the hooks can be a variety of other things. They can be personal in a family-oriented way. They can be economical and financial. They can be political. They can be concern for world affairs or kind of an environmental issue. In other words, what you were saying is, there is a myriad of ways of addressing news to make it interesting to the readership.

Jurney: Yes. And out of that conference in Copenhagen, the stories generally were always presented when the Jewish women walked out because the Arabó

Kasper: Palestinian women were angry.

Jurney: Yes. Demanding somethingódemanding recognition, I guess. But there was no recognition of the importance of that agenda at the meeting.

Kasper: That's why I stillóI agree with you, that the Wall Street Journal technique of exemplars is so powerful. I see that linked very much to what we were just talking about.

Jurney: Yes.

Kasper: Because, you see, I, and maybe this is because I'm a woman, I don't know, but I find when I read the newspaper that I am so drawn to those personal portraits that are characterized in a newspaper story. I find it has a very direct human link for me when I read that.

Jurney: Right.

Kasper: And that I am much more anxious to go on and read the general news in that article about that issue, whether it's unemployment or family lawó

Jurney: Sure. Oh, you're right.

Kasper: óor pension rights, if in fact, it is directly related to a human being.

Jurney: To a human being. Right.

Kasper: And that's what we're saying, that the hooks don't always have to be violence and war and confrontation. There are different kinds of hooks. And I thought that was one of the most powerful conclusions from that study.

Jurney: Yes. You're right. And, of course, when it came to the ERA, we found that Phyllis Schlafley simply carried the male newspaper editorsóthrew them off their feet because she had a blonde beehive hairdo and was very articulate and spoke inó

Kasper: Argumentative terms.